


Maybe One Day (i'll get around fixing myself too)

by Analinea



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Angst, M/M, One-shot (for now), Slow Burn, asfdmovie voice: I have no idea how to tag, clone shiro is there yay, for the actual tagging, more info in the notes, second time posting this, set somewhere in the nebulous area after the Abyss (don't ask me what season that is), somewhat following canon events in the past, there is a lot of friend and family feels but i'm not tagging all of them, these idiots are pinning but they won't admit it out loud
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23346547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Analinea/pseuds/Analinea
Summary: Keith comes back from the Abyss with bad news about Lotor...but there's another thing, one he has to deal with alone. It's about Shiro.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 39





	1. I don't even know where to start

**Author's Note:**

> A few infos:  
> 1\. Title (and chapter titles, see point 3) are from [Two by Sleeping At Last](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrDzd4ufypE)  
> 2\. This story is the joint effort of me and my brain-cell-mate, we talked plot and characters and fitting things into an AU and I wrote this and it's been so long she genuinely forgot it existed lmao  
> 3\. It's posted as a one-shot, but it's actually not. The fact is: I have, like, 4 chapters written and unedited that would be what I consider part 1 of a series. I really wanted to share at least chapter 1 now that it's been edited, and I want to share the rest when I have time. But I just don't want to work on a story if people aren't interested cause I have a Teen Wolf and an original WIP going on. So I'm putting it up as a one-shot until I know if there's some audience for it.  
> 4\. I already posted it once (the more than a year part of point 3) but I was not happy with it (hence the editing) AND I was quite uh...emotionally unstable for multiple reasons, and when things didn't go as well as I wanted them to I threw a tantrum and deleted the thing and gosh I hope no one remembers that...  
> 5\. Sorry about the long note. If you're here, I hope you read this and comment and make me want to share the rest of it! If you're here because you hoped for the next City Trees chapter, don't worry, it's coming tomorrow morning!

When Keith steps into the cave after a too long absence, there’s something different about him. He still has the same face -handsome- and the same hair -acceptable- and the same unfairly broad shoulders half-hidden by the leather armor he never leaves without. 

He does have new equipment, but that’s not what this is about; Lance has learned long ago to look past appearances. 

To someone so attuned to every nuance of the ocean’s capricious nature, a metaphor comes to Lance, who very distinctly thinks, _he used to be a storm, and now he’s a driving wind_. 

Keith, said less poetically, seems settled in his own skin.

Right behind him, movement catches Lance eyes; he glances away long enough to notice a Galran woman and a rusty colored wolf. But he can’t take his eyes off of Keith for too long, off of the hardness of the man’s expression, the determination as he looks around and–

Doesn’t stop on Lance at all.

It shouldn’t hurt like it does.

“Is Keith’s mullet shorter, or is he actually taller?” Lance says loud enough to get everyone’s attention. Hunk sends a look of pity his way because he _knows_ and Lance finds himself missing Pidge’s eye rolls: they didn’t make him feel so fragile.

It takes less than a second for Keith to react, muscle memory. “We don’t have time for this, Lance,” he bites out while pushing him out of the way. Lance looks away to hide how the dismissal aches down to his guts; he’s used to Keith fighting back, not leaving him hanging. No one else says anything about it, which is a blessing. 

“Who are your companions?” Allura asks, wary but less so than she would’ve been some time ago. Before Lotor. 

“This is an Abyss wolf,” Keith answers curtly like it’s normal to introduce a weird dog first. The urgency in his tone makes Lance look back up at the newcomers; a split second before Keith says it, Lance sees it. “And this is my mother, Krolia.”

Gasps all around– Lance wants to turn to them and laugh about how obvious it was. But maybe not everyone is so well versed in every angle of Keith’s face.

In the end, then, Keith was right to leave them. It doesn’t make it any easier when Lance remembers their last night before the departure.

“I have some important informations,” Keith continues without answering any of the questions that have tapered off.

Allura looks taken aback by the bluntness of it all, grown unused to Keith’s straight-to-the-point attitude. She glances at Shiro who’s standing there arms crossed, like this means nothing at all to him. Going for steady but achieving uncaring, almost as if he’d forgotten who he used to be. Lance seems to be the only one noticing this; Allura simply turns back to Keith and gathers herself by putting her business face on. 

“Let us get into the ship, then,” she angles herself to open the way.

They all follow up the gangplank to the upper deck and down the hatch. Lance always looks at it dubiously; he’s always known about submersible ships, but the sea is more capricious and smarter than humans’ ingenuity, no matter what Hunk has to say about it.

He brings up the rear, observes them all: Allura’s carefully regal gait that gives up nothing, Keith’s tense shoulders and how he doesn’t get anywhere close to Shiro. How Shiro doesn’t look back even once.

Down on the control deck, without need for prompting, Keith declares, “Lotor is using us. _You_ ,” he specifies, looking at Allura.

She opens her mouth but her voice gets caught on a refutation, shock overtaking her features. Then she seems confused between her want to defend Lotor and to trust one of her Paladins. She catches herself just before reaching anger, schooling her features, becoming the queen who has to consider every option and make hard decisions. 

Lance supposes a tiny voice at the back of her head is whispering to her that she knew all along not to trust even one Galra. If Pidge was there, maybe she would even say out loud _told you so_ after sharing a knowing look with Hunk and Lance; they’d never trusted Lotor, race notwithstanding. But Lance and Hunk stay quiet out of consideration for Allura’s feelings.

“Do you have any proof of your claim?” Shiro asks coldly, even dismissively, before Allura can speak. Lance's vindicated feelings are swept to the side to leave room for a quiet disappointment; it's unfair of Shiro to take away from Allura her right to be the one to ask this.

But Shiro hasn’t been considerate for a while now; since he got Black back from the Galra, actually, on a mission with both Keith and Lotor. After that, Shiro had seemed to trust Lotor without ever giving good reasons to, though one could argue that Allura’s faith in the prince could be enough.

Just, not enough for the others.

Lance's eyes fall back on Allura, who's nodding at Keith to continue with his explanation. Gods, but no matter how much he wished for it, she doesn't deserve to be proven wrong about Lotor. He suddenly regrets every comment they made on the subject with Pidge.

It's a relief, then, that Lotor isn't here himself. That way, they can at least digest the news, come up with a plan of action that won't simply be to hit hard, no questions asked. Lance has seen too much of the Galras' justice to refuse to _anyone_ their right to defend themselves.

Even if Lance doesn't doubt neither Keith nor his words for one second.

“I do,” Keith answers, head held high but looking straight at Allura without more than a glance at Shiro.

She looks down and back up at Keith, a single second of vulnerability before hardening again. She almost seems already convinced, and maybe that's the worst part of this. Her world that won't stop shattering.

When Keith sees the heartbreak on Allura's face, he almost falters. He almost turns to Shiro, or to Lance, or even to his mother; but he can't. _One step at a time_ , he repeats to himself so he doesn't break under the pressure.

His eyes stubbornly stay on Allura, allowing himself a few glances at Hunk and wondering where Pidge could be. At his fingertips there's the soft brush of his wolf's fur, and he draws strength from the steady presence.

Krolia closes the distance between herself and the Princess to hold a recorder to her; it's crude but it's more technology than the Paladins of Voltron have at the moment. Keith won't go down this particularly bitter train of thoughts right now, but he can't help feeling justified when he remembers that the Blade of Marmora has more tools than the remaining Alteans at his point.

The memory of past arguments about the use of Voltron when the Lions can't be powered still makes his blood boil.

“This is...,” Allura breathes out, transfixed by the flimsy images displayed one after the other on the small glass screen. Pidge swore once that the equipment stored in this ship would be way more advanced than any electrical device or steam engine or massive stationary cameras, but they have to do with black and white flickering pictures instead.

It doesn't really matter when this is good enough quality that there's no mistaking what it is. _Alteans_. Alteans in tubes, looking worse than dead.

“The bastard…,” Lance quietly mutters, not loud enough to take room in the conversation but sharing a meaningful glance with Hunk. 

Allura can't form any words, hand on her heart like it's threatening to fall out of her chest -it surely feels like it. Coran has taken one look over her shoulder and retreated to the control panels to pretend he's busy so he doesn't have to show how this affects him. Always a smile on his face for them or his back turned when he can't, it seems.

“Is there any evidence tying this to Lotor?” Shiro asks harshly, arms crossed on his chest. His shoulder joint releases a light puff and the hydraulics settle; the sound makes Keith bristle even more than the question does.

“Isn't my word enough?” he snarls. He's very aware that it shouldn't be, logically, no matter his relationship with Shiro. But he knows his brother isn't questioning him out of a worry for fairness and it puts him even more on the defensive. He never had the best temper to start with, too.

 _Focus on Lotor first_ , he reminds himself.

“Keith,” Allura starts, standing strong, head held high. She looks like the stony Princess she used to be when they first met her. Lately, she had let the softness behind show more and more, but now that this is happening...

How long, Keith wonders sometimes, until they all crack under the pressure?

“I hear what you are saying, but I fear we need to wait for Lotor to return to get to the bottom of this. I will give him a chance to explain himself, and in the meantime I need you to share all the informations you have on this situation. Including how you believe has to do with Lotor.”

Keith doesn't have much more than circumstantial evidence and the instincts that never failed him before -especially when he decided not to follow them and they proved how wrong he'd been, he thinks as his eyes accidentally pass on Lance.

He says as much. But to his surprise, Allura offers him a smile, albeit a sad one. “I do trust you,” she says.

It kills him, but he can't help being grateful for that. 

He doesn’t seem like it, and his childhood should’ve made it otherwise, but Lance is actually very patient when he wants to be. Comes with long hours with no wind on a sailing ship -no easy-to-track steam for pirates. Being stranded in the middle of the ocean can be quite boring, and it’s not like he could abuse his wind god by praying to them at every turn.

Lance’s favorite pastime then was to be overly dramatic, although Hunk hated when Lance started joking about who they should eat first in case of food shortage. He knows it makes him seem like a fool, but it didn’t use to matter back when the important people in his life were able to recognize that it isn’t all there is to him.

So, in short, Lance is willing to wait. For Voltron to really happen -even if he’s growing tired of being a Paladin in name only, of being outnumbered in battles they have to fight on foot. It’ll be worth it in the end, Blue says to him when he’s restless. 

He’s willing to wait for Shiro to stop being on the wrong side of rigorous, for Keith to look his way again even if they’ll never be _more_.

But what he’s eager for is for the pointed eared hot-air balloon -the nicest way he can think about Lotor- to come back so they can kick his ass to steam. 

Right now, though, they’re all on the upper deck and there’s nothing to do but wait and study the situation. 

Lance is observant, too. He’s used to long hours being the barrelman because he got the best eyesight. His crew made him scrutinize the surface and under for fish or birds they could eat, Galran ships to attack and relieve of their booty -those were the good days, when he could send money to his family at the next port.

Once, he even spotted a weblum’s back breaking the surface in the distance; a sign of good luck.

Right now, Lance is on the upper deck with the others, nothing else to do but be patient and study the situation. Lay careful eyes on the way Keith steps so very carefully around Shiro every time he gets too close.

Lance wants to go talk to him: there’s so many things to share, from their worry for Pidge to the Galra woman who hovers at the edge of their group. But he can’t seem to be able to take one step towards Keith. It’s not news to himself, that he’s such a coward.

The quiet discussion that Lance didn’t listen to dies down and Allura silently steers Coran away. Hunk excuses himself after a questioning glance at Lance, to which he responds with a discreet shake of the head. He’s not in the mood for a conversation right now, not about feeling and not about betrayal. He doesn’t have the energy for anger or laughs anymore.

“Lance,” a voice makes him jump. He turns to find Shiro, holding back a sigh at the prospect of having to talk to someone anyway. What he can’t help, though, is his heart trying to beat out of his chest. He wants his body to get the memo that he shouldn’t be so scared of interacting with Shiro, but the past few...however long it’s been, it’s been hard.

Shiro getting on his case about every little thing, dismissing him, siding with foolish plans to the advantage of Lotor. Shiro himself had admitted that he didn’t feel right, and Lance has spent too long agonizing about what to do without finding any solution. The guilt eats at him; he wishes he could share the burden but he promised not to talk about it with everyone and as long as Shiro isn’t a threat to himself or anyone else, Lance’ll keep his word.

“Your comment about Lotor back there,” he starts, arms crossed and motioning vaguely with his head, “was out of line.”

Lance clenches his jaw to avoid letting out an exclamation of outrage.

“Aren’t you going to answer me?” Shiro asks dangerously low, so close to reprobation but frightening instead. Lance frowns, trying to swallow around the lump in his throat and crossing his arms in turn to hide the shaking of his hands. 

_That’s new_ , Lance thinks, _wanting me to talk_. He frowns, but doesn’t voice that; he doesn’t have a death wish, especially now that he’s tried that once. “I didn’t have anything to say that Allura hasn’t said,” he answers, unable to hide the tremors in his voice but staying clear of the slight insult he let out during the earlier debrief. It’s not like it’s a secret, his opinion on Lotor. 

Shiro looks regretful that Lance can’t be reasonable. That’s exactly what he says, too, before adding “This is above petty jealousy, you know, I thought you’d be more sensible about this.”

Lance opens his mouth but can’t let any word out. The fact that Shiro tries again and again to defend Lotor is one thing that could be explained by his status as leader, by how impartial he has to be to see the big picture.

But the way he cuts Lance over and over with ease. That didn’t use to be Shiro. Yes, Lance has been reprimanded before about his aloofness, his careless attitude, even his being an asshole sometimes -all that he can recognize are true to what he shows the world of himself. He hates that a team he considers family hasn’t yet managed to make him feel trusted enough to drop the act, hasn’t tried to see deeper -aside from Hunk, of course. But he can accept it. Shiro’s sometimes obvious bias towards Keith or Pidge is understandable, too.

But this. It’s just cruel, and Lance has no way to answer that is not part of his everlasting performance. “Jealousy?” he asks, high pitched like he’s offended but caught in a lie, “Me? What could I be jealous of, I’m the best!”

A cough interrupts him before he can start being hysterical enough to annoy Shiro into leaving him alone. Lance turns to find Keith; he’s not ashamed or embarrassed of what he just said -except he is, and he wishes Keith didn’t look so disdainful and fed up.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Keith asks to Shiro. 

Lance has spent most of his childhood begging for scraps of food after the Galra wrecked his home; he won’t start crying now just because Keith is ignoring him. He has held his ground against Captain Iverson’s incessant scorn; he won’t be broken by Shiro’s mild contempt. He doesn’t stop to consider how worse everything is because he loves them both so much -though in different ways.

So he watches them walk away, without flinching. He does jump when he turns to head below-deck and finds Keith’s mother scrutinizing him from a distance. He can’t hold her gaze for long, afraid of what he’ll see reflected on her face.

Keith runs his fingers on his tattoo, over his jugular. If he really focuses, he can feel slight ridges where the ink raises his skin and then forget about another’s hand, gently touching him there. Like he’s something precious. 

He’s never told a soul why or when he got it. Only Shiro can tell it wasn’t there before the expedition to the north pole. That’s just the thing, actually. Shiro _knows_. It makes it all so damn difficult.

They stand next to each other, barely breathless from the hike, on the hollowed-out cliff that hides Allura’s cavern and ship with the added help of some Altean tricks. Keith doesn’t leave Shiro to stand in his blind spots -he can’t afford that, now.

Keith doesn’t like thinking about the Abyss; massive crack wounding the earth so deeply no instrument can help navigate it. Where time and sanity mean nothing. And time, yes, Keith spent so much of it trying to get out, agonizing over what he should do once he’s free, rehearsing this moment. He’s no closer to an answer. 

Krolia tried to help, of course. If only they both weren’t standing so far away from each other, separated by an absence she tried to explain but that Keith can’t quite forgive. He understands, really. That’s the worst part.

“Not really your usual go-to place,” Shiro remarks. It’s true: this is more of a Lance and Coran thing. Looking out at the ocean, reminiscing old memories.

Keith can’t see what they do, the beauty and peace. All he gets is unease. Since the moment he was born, his life has been shaky ground constantly crumbling under his feet; he hates impermanence, hates thinking of capricious water holding your life between its waves. It’s the lack of control, even when you’re so sure you mastered the sea. 

He needs solid, honest land.

Maybe that’s why Lance–

In the distance, massive clouds block the horizon, too orderly to be anything else than dirty steam from Galra warships. To the left, a storm rages that will hit them soon if the wind doesn’t change direction. And right under them, something cuts through the waves with intent. Keith frowns when he recognizes the patterns of the hovership; he just learned that Pidge borrowed it, though he didn’t have time to ask what for.

“You shouldn’t know that,” Keith mutters after a too-long pause as he returns to the moment, voice lost to the wind. Shiro turns to him questioningly and Keith glances back at him, wishing for the briefest instant that he had the team at his back. He wants this problem not to be _his_ , but _theirs_.

Keith just owes Shiro too much, to any version of him holding his memories and pains and joys; this is between the both of them.

Would it have been easier if he had found out that this Shiro is nothing but a mindless clone with ill intention? The files he found talked about the perfect spy– one that wouldn’t even be aware of his role. This _is_ Shiro, to Keith. It’s that simple. It’s that gut-wrenchingly hard. A threat wearing his brother’s face, made by the enemy, but inside the weapon...

When Keith trains and trains until he hurts everywhere, just to forget the anguish and the guilt for a few peaceful seconds, he gains a clarity that tells him he couldn’t have known sooner that Shiro has been replaced. He just feels so fucking stupid because he was _right_ _there_ on the mission; Lotor, Shiro and him, gone to retrieve Black. Keith thought about it over and over again: it had to have happened during that _so short_ time they were separated. 

There isn’t a second when he doesn’t feel like he could cave under the guilt. He doesn’t know if Shiro is still alive and captive somewhere, waiting to be rescued, or if he’s dead and gone. And Keith didn’t notice anything, left the place without a look back. This person, standing right next to him, could be the only Shiro left.

And Keith will be damned if he doesn’t find a way to save him.

That means trying for the talking angle -admittedly, not his strong suit. His mind is a tornado of thought, always, that he can’t be bothered to spell out so everyone else can catch up. It’s why it’s so easy to be around Pidge: she’s quick enough to get him with few words and a pointed look. The rest of the team calls him reckless; truth is he’s just restless.

And irritable, yes. It’s unbearable sometimes to talk with Hunk, who’s so grounded, or with Lance who tries to anchor everyone to a discussion where everything is laid out and thought through. Standing still is not for Keith.

Now, he doesn’t know where to start, how to put things into a comprehensive order, one that can be explained word after word. It’s laborious.

Fingers running over the tattoo, he stalls for a little longer. “Do you know why I chose this design?” he asks, though it’s rhetorical and he’s not sure he knows where he’s going with it. It just seems like a place to start. The storm is getting closer, a lightning strike cutting shapes through the dark clouds that look like a dragon taking flight. The thunder sounds almost weak from where they stand, and yet the ground rumbles under them in answer.

“I don’t, no.”

Keith remembers the old woman who pierced his skin with the thinnest needle, her hands soft and steady. She had skin like Hunk and talked of her far-away island, of the ship routes cut off by Galran fleets. Does Hunk have tattoos like she described, covering whole backs and bodies? Keith realizes sometimes, how little they really know each other; they have this deep connection made of blood and sweat and battle, the trust and shared trauma. The massive automatons. But their past lives? 

Keith has tried once, to ask, but it’s not that he doesn’t care. Despite his curiosity, he just finds himself running away from their stories, scared for a reason he can’t quite understand. And anyway, it’s not like Lance had seemed keen on sharing, that one time.

“It’s a symbol,” he starts. He found it in a book, months into the Galran occupation. Altea, the only kingdom powerful enough to resist, had been annihilated, and Keith was hiding in the bordering desert. Listening day in and day out to New Garrison’s communication for any word about Shiro. All he heard was _Voltron_ , but no book could tell him what that meant. 

Instead, he found this single drawing between pages he hadn’t been really focused on -foreign theology and philosophy- simply skimming for any mention of Voltron. It had caught his eyes: two triangles, except not. One wasn't defined by lines but instead by three cut out dots at the tips. The other, reversed, was half erased lines to appear under the first, invisible, one.

It was the _absence_ on the page, that stopped Keith.

“It’s a theory that the eye doesn’t perceive pieces independently, but the whole they represent. For me it’s...this idea. That I’m not just a broken up thing with drifting fragments. I’m not even the missing parts of all the people that left me, I’m– I’m all of that, together, it’s who I am. For a long time, I was lost and scattered and this...despite everything, it helps me find my center, gather myself. It reminds me that I’m whole.”

Shiro turns to him, but Keith can’t look back afraid to see pity and guilt. Whether he meant to or not, Shiro is one of those fractures inside of him. He came into his life at a time when Keith had lost all hope, and then took it all away again when he vanished without a trace.

“I’m–”

“Don’t say you’re sorry,” Keith cuts him off, turning to him for a brief second. _I fought so hard to have you back_ , he thinks, _and I’ll do it again. Because you left me twice now and I’m still standing way behind you and all there’s left is pieces of you that highlight your absence._

It doesn’t matter what the Galras’ goal is here, though Keith doesn’t understand how they’re all still alive and hidden when they’ve been spied on for weeks.

It doesn’t matter because Keith found Shiro once. When he looks at him now, he sees everything he failed to notice, all the discrepancies. But he also sees the one man he’ll never let go of. 

“I know you’re in there somewhere, Haggar,” Keith spits out. He found Shiro once. He’ll find him again.


	2. Put my mask on first

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright I'm adding to this and putting it as unfinished! I'm still unsure of when I'll have time to update for the same reasons, and also because I'll start work again not too long from now and it makes writing very, very hard (I'm pretty sad about that hah)  
> I hope you're all safe out there! Thank you for your comments I love you all <3 Keep them coming, that'll motivate me to work on editing the next chapter <3

“So...Lotor is a back-stabbing bitch. Tell me something I don't know,” Pidge declares, arms crossed. Her callousness is a little grating after Shiro's little speech and Keith's...everything, but Lance really doesn't disagree so he says nothing.

The hovership she borrowed clangs softly against the hull of Allura's ship with every small wave disturbing the water. It's so tiny compared to the Altean ship. It used to be Keith's, the one he used to get Shiro back after the polar expedition, the fastest steam humans built. Hunk removed the wheels and made it amphibious in his hours lost to anxiety.

Lance stares at it from over the banister of the upper deck. He finds comfort in the bigger-than-him fate infused in every piece of the world. The string of events that is ineluctable. Keith's ship, helping him get Shiro back, modified by Hunk so Pidge could eventually borrow it to go find the resistance.

How she found her own brother with it.

Matt is talking excitedly to Coran in the background, a soundtrack that makes the whole seem less bleak. Pidge, her back to the water next to Lance, looks at her brother with a look on her face that used to be indecipherable. She's never been so genuinely happy since Lance knows her.

“Are you even listening to me?” Pidge asks, turning to him and holding his gaze until Lance snaps out of his thoughts. The guilt flashes fast and vicious in his guts when he realizes he hasn't really been here with her.

Her coming back, the mutual debrief, and now; all overshadowed by the worry that erodes his insides everytime he thinks about Keith. It's a bit unfair, that she had to come right after Keith with his Krolia and life changing intel.

“Where's Keith anyway?” she adds as an afterthought, but the knowing glint in her eyes burns any deflection to ashes. She knows she just echoed Lance's thoughts.

“With Shiro. Doesn't matter,” he silently pleads with her to drop it. Any other day she would've pressed the issue relentlessly, but not today. Today, she's distracted too. “While we wait to kick some hot ass butt,” he redirects to make her roll her eyes, “I want to know why you didn't mention your brother is such a hotty.”

She makes a high pitched offended sound, hits him in the shoulder in retaliation. “Don't you dare go there,” she says through his chuckles, then joins the quiet laughter.

They both grow silent again, and Lance turns to look to the upper deck too when he hears Hunk joining Coran and Matt.

The picture Pidge had of her brother showed a rigid, black and white version of him standing before a fake nature background. The kind of photograph well-off people get done. The difference is striking, not only because he used to be an awkwardly lanky dude with the round glasses now on Pidge's face. Not because now he's grown some ragged badass look for himself with muscles and a ponytail and a bonus cheek scar.

It's the liveliness. It goes without saying that photographs can't move, but Lance can't even imagine Matt staying still long enough to pose for it. He's energy and sparks, even under what the years in hiding and fighting did to him.

Matt turns to Pidge and they exchange a fond smile despite the heaviness in their eyes. It bring back a moment that'll never be washed from his memories: the day Pidge found her brother's grave. The screams and the tears. It's a forever scar for Pidge, he knows, and Lance will never forgive Matt for the hurt he dealt to her. But the way they look at each other, it's absolution and love.

It makes something inside of Lance ache.

“I just couldn't believe it at first,” Pidge murmurs, and Lance wonders if he's supposed to hear it. Her pause echoes her uncertainty at the reality of the moment. The rarity of good things make them seem like lies; not dreams, because Lance is pretty sure none of them have those anymore.

“When I solved the puzzle I found at...,” she trails off, gaze lost in the unsaid. Then she clears her throat and continues, “I just thought there would be some souvenir inside, or nothing at all. Maybe the puzzle _was_ the souvenir but I couldn't stand not solving it.”

This puzzle at Matt's grave was a testament to the kind of genius the Holt siblings are; a wooden ball with infinite possible combinations that they would set up for each other. As _toddlers_. Pidge had spent months on it after finding it. _The hardest he ever made it_ , she had said through unshed tears, still curled over it to try and open it.

“The code to a rebel ship's communications frequency was unexpected,” she huffs now, “but actually finding Matt there...,” she shrugs. “I told Matt not to say a thing about it to Allura. She still thinks we found each other at a secret Holt hideout.”

They had agreed not to say a word of this to Allura until they were sure of what it was. It's not her they didn't trust, obviously, but she would've mentioned it to Lotor so they could plan a way to reach the alliance.

Lance hums, glancing at the way Pidge can't tear her eyes away from Matt. He can't bear anything happening to them again, for her sake; under his breath, he whispers a blessing that doesn't escape her notice.

“Still praying, huh?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” he mutters with a frown. He wasn't even praying, he was warding off bad luck; he doesn't explain that, though, because she wouldn't appreciate the sentiment _at all_. “Is there a reason I should've stopped?”

He knows all the reasons she thinks he should, actually. She finds it stupid and childish and naive. No power in the universe looks over them, no one protects them, they're alone and bloody and there's no rhyme or reason to it, just survival.

She considers him for a second with this assessing gaze she has sometimes that makes Lance's skin crawl. He almost wants to scream when she does that; when she forgets that humans are not pieces of a machinery to disassemble or cyphers to crack. That there's no damaged piece to him that she just has to fix so he can stop _believing_.

He doesn't openly say so anymore, but her being so critical of his faith hurts a lot.

Krolia emerges from a hatch right behind Allura, the both of them deep in a serious looking conversation. If he had enough curiosity in him, Lance would read Allura's lips.

“When is Lotor supposed to be back?” Pidge asks, following his line of sight and sighing. Always bored and impatient.

“Soon, I think. I wish he wouldn't come back at all.”

“What? Why?” Pidge turns to him, disapproving.

He sighs, look away. “Because we'll wreck this place if we fight. And...,” he hesitates, looks at Allura again. “Allura shouldn't have to do this.”

Pidge snorts, less humor and more judgment. “She's strong. She can take it.”

Lance frowns. He doesn't know why, he can't convince Pidge of anything she refuses to understand, but he can't stop the words. “I know, but it's unfair. It's not because someone is strong that they should have to deal with hardships.”

She turns away, jaw clenched, just like Lance knew she would. She's never been indulgent to herself so she struggles with hearing about soft sentiments. Afraid of it, maybe, of what could happen if she ever tried being kind to herself. She has too much to lose and enough guilt wrapped around her bones to choke her; they all do.

“I'll go see what's happening,” she dismisses him, straightens up and walks away without a single look behind.

Keith blocks a blow from Shiro's arm that make his bones ache. Any other blade, except maybe his bayard, would've shattered from the force of the impact, but Keith is using his mother's sword. The weight of this fight might very well break Keith himself, though. He takes a step back and assesses his opponent again.

The smile on Shiro's face is wrong. He's not breaking a sweat while Keith is shuddering from the exertion.

“What is wrong, Paladin?”Shiro chuckles, the accent not his own. “Are you so afraid to win this fight that you will not give it your all?”

Keith grunts. “Shut up,” he strains to get out, arms burning. His pants allow the biting air inside his lungs; he tastes iodine and the salt of his own sweat. He lets out a sharp breath when Shiro charges him, lets the arm glide against his weapon as he ducks down and to the side.

His hope of making Shiro stumble away is thwarted when he simply uses his momentum to twist around and swipe up at Keith, who steps back so quickly he nearly trips over his feet.

Managing to stay up, Keith readies himself for the next attack but Shiro only stands there, a smug smile on his lips. There is no trace of the usual fondness in his eyes as Haggar plays with Keith, knows full well her fighter has the upper hand. It's not only physical, it's psychological as she mimics their brotherly sparring games, a twisted up version that overlaps sweet memories.

Keith swallows down bile, heart hammering inside his chest. He's exhausting himself. His determination to win without dealing fatal damage to his brother forces him to stay on the defensive too long. He should've came up with a tactic beforehand, something new, that Shiro wouldn't recognize and would knock him down without hurting him too much.

There's no time for regrets; he could die here and he can't afford to.

Keith looks at Shiro's relaxed posture, his white tuft of hair dancing in the ocean's breeze, his weaponized limb. He used to get sick in the quiet hours that sapped his facade and left him shaking and sobbing. Keith was the only witness to the slow crumble of his brother, the only carer to the bleeding scratch marks where metal and flesh met.

It took months for Shiro, growing anew from the ashen husk of a human the Galra made of him. All this progress, and it'll count for nothing because of what they did to him again.

“What's your plan?” Keith asks, because there's no one else but him to.

“When you die,” Haggar answers, “my plan will be none of your concern.” Right. Keith wasn't expecting an answer anyway.

He still doesn't understand any of it though.

 _This is why you need a strategist_ , a voice echoes through his head, sounding a lot like Lance. No time for that now. He needs to finish this. _What makes this remote mind-control possible_ , he asks himself in Pidge's voice. _Why is the arm different_ , Hunk adds.

 _Go for the arm_ , whispers Shiro, _don't be afraid to hurt me_.

But he's so scared. Because Keith has only ever been a match to Shiro's skills by losing control. Letting go of the human part of his soul.

His weakness must show because Shiro lunges so suddenly that Keith can only raise his sword and be sent skidding to close to the edge of the cliff by the violent clash. When his head snaps back, it's sheer luck that he avoids cracking his skull open on soft soil instead of rock; he's still disoriented enough that he can barely lift his weapon in time to keep Shiro's hand from crushing his head.

The blow that comes for his face makes his head spin. He has to free one hand to block Shiro's flesh one when it comes for him again, but he's shaking and suddenly his arm is pinned to the ground. Shiro's laugh is manic and his eyes lit up by a madness that doesn't belong there, so close to Keith he can feel Shiro's breath on his face.

The metal hand wraps around Keith's own blade and bears down. It gets uncomfortably close to cutting his throat open but it's the heat that wounds Keith first: the machinery allowing Shiro's prosthetic to work scorches his skin even several inches away from it. He hears the sizzling of his own flesh before the pain hits and he yells.

He's empty of nothing but panic, instinct making him squirm to get away, eyes shut and head turned. He can't _move_ , breath locked in his throat. “Shiro!” he shouts, voice cracking like a child's. “Shiro,” a sob he resents himself from letting out. All of him reduced to a scrambling terror, his self-control bleeding out of him like he's an open wound.

For a wild second, he accepts his fate, ready to give up.

_This is the pain Shiro feels everyday._

He kicks at Shiro, to no avail, raw voice begging one last time, “Shiro, please!”

In the opening, the minute falter in Shiro's push, something sparks inside of Keith, a need for survival that overtakes every last cell in his body. Sets him aflame. And Keith lets go.

His next kick puts Shiro off balance enough that Keith can tear his hand free to grasp the blade; on a hoarse shout, he pushes up, nerves firing up as his blood runs down the length of the sword, waking up his every senses. He barely feels the pain but the rush inside his veins gives him a clarity that lets him dissect every flicker of surprise and panic and frustration on Shiro's face.

His hearing zeroes in on a thundering heartbeat that isn't his own; he feels powerful enough to crush it to nothing but dust. To make it a game.

But he catches a distorted glimpse of his eyes in the metal of Shiro's hand and the disgust sobers him up; he snarls and with a strong shove twists them up. Shiro gets up and out of his reach before he can immobilize him.

And disappears.

Any other moment, Keith would've missed the horror on Shiro's face -all his own. Any other moment, he would've missed the giving of the weakened edge under Shiro's weight.

It is not often that Keith is grateful for his Galran blood. He is now, when it gives him the speed to grab Shiro.

He blanks out when the metal cauterizes his injury and burns the leather of his glove, but keeps his hold even when the jarring pull threatens to pull his shoulder out. Keith doesn't have enough voice left to scream, but reflexive tears spill out of his eyes at the agony, swept away by the violent wind. He never cries, never, that's all he can think about for an insane second. Even at his father's funeral, cheeks as dry as the desert they lived in.

He gasps back to himself, gathers the scattered pieces of his mind. His inhuman strength is deserting him slowly but he won't allow himself to drop Shiro, he needs to _think_.

“Keith,” Shiro's frantic voice drifts up to him through the wind ruthlessly beating them. The storm is coming fast and all Keith can see is the waves crashing against the cliff side, ready to swallow Shiro up. Every pebble coming lose under him, disappearing in the water feels like an ill omen. “Keith it's okay. Let go, it's okay,” he cries out. Keith looks at his pleading eyes, his worry for his little brother, his acceptance, and it's unbearable.

Keith claws at the merciless earth, but it offers him no anchor to pull them back; his shaking body is close to giving up.

“Keith,” but his voice is cold, his features hard and vicious. “If you die, he doesn't have to”.

 _No_ , Keith thinks, doubtless, _if I die now he will lose himself_. There only one thing left to do.

As his hand find the discarded hilt of his sword, as he raises it above his head, all he can see is the surprise that doesn't belong to Shiro written all over his face. Haggar doesn't have time to react.

“I'm sorry,” Keith mouths. He brings the blade down.


	3. Already tired of trying to recall when it all fell apart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What Lance says at the beginning here is taken from a (gay) french song I just love [listen here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jabih9mV6RQ)

“ _ If the sea eats our bodies and the salt cleans our hearts...,” Lance mutters, eyes closed but face turned towards the ocean. A twig snaps behind him and makes him swallow his next words in surprise. _

_ Turning to find Keith behind him, Lance knows that the sound, as jarring as it'd been, was on purpose, for his benefit. _

“ _ Praying again?” Keith asks, devoid of his usual gear. Sometimes, Lance wonders how it is Keith doesn't buckle under the weight of his armor and weapons. The smile on his face is soft enough that Lance knows he's not mocking his faith, so he doesn't bristle at the words. _

“ _ I always wondered what you're saying,” Keith continues, unusually chatty. Maybe behind this almost question, what he wants to ask is if Lance really gets answers or reassurance from his gods. _

_ Lance can't bring himself to smile or joke in response, because Keith is leaving. He's leaving them. Him. Keith is leaving. That's all he can think about. _

“ _ I'm asking–” the words catch in his throat like fish-bones. He coughs, averts his eyes. “I'm asking forgiveness. So, hum.” He looks back up into Keith's eyes, “So when the sea takes me–” He can't finish the thought. He wants to say it so desperately, that he needs to be sure he'll find his way back to Keith, in life or in death. But Keith is leaving and proving that it's a tie he doesn't want right now. Maybe ever. _

“ _ What do you mean?” Keith scoffs uncomfortably when Lance doesn't continue, like he doesn't want to look too closely at the number of things Lance's words could mean. “The sea isn't taking you anywhere.” What a stubborn boy. _

_ Lance smiles, then, a tired thing. This moment is so unlike the both of them. “People like me,” he answers, people with salt water in their veins, people who always die first, “we don't belong on steady ground.” And you do, he doesn't say, you do. _

It's a quiet hour, and it seems wrong. Down in the infirmary, the sounds of the ship are muffled except for the occasional echo down the pipes. It's eerie; when it's the first thing you hear, drifting from the sedatives, it makes you believe you're one of the ghosts now. Lance would know.

He sighs, leans against the metal edge of the door-frame, eyes finding Keith's unconscious form; he can't bring himself to sit down near the bed. It's part nerves -he's not sure he has the right to such closeness- and part nervousness. The churning of his stomach can't be tamed; hyper-vigilance keeps him waiting to fight, no matter that the threat has already passed.

It doesn't help that none of them can tell what happened, and neither Shiro nor Keith is awake to give them the answers.

Krolia went to investigate the cliff-top a while ago, as restless as her son.

Coran comes back from his work table with an ointment, forcing Lance's attention back on the wounds he's been carefully avoiding thinking about until now. The bleeding cuts, the burns, and the way he almost seemed to have stopped breathing when–

Lance's breath catches in his throat for a second, only coming easier when he looks long enough to see the minute raising and falling of Keith’s chest.

Lance tries to regulate his breathing to abate his anxiety; he hasn’t been able to shake the feeling ever since hearing Keith’s wolf howl in the same heartbeat as Red’s anguish blindsiding him, splitting his skull open. A Lion breaking the silent oath to stay only in her Paladin’s mind; Lance thought Keith was–

But none of them could understand what was happening until they heard the thump of two bodies and turned to see the wolf drying himself. Then going to lap gently at Keith’s cheek, who did not so much as stir.

It was only a few minutes before that Lance had been thinking about Matt’s cheek scar; how sexy it made him look. It was a stupid, harmless thought. But now he has to remember their context, the pain and memories attached to a wound that’ll stay etched forever where everyone can see. Keith will probably not care; Lance will still feel guilty about it. 

But that carelessness also makes Lance mad. Because of it, Lance has to feel like this –powerless to protect, standing in the aftermath with a list of all that could have gone worse than it has. 

If Keith and Shiro had died, down in the ocean, would anyone have even found them? Keith had no right; water is Lance's kingdom,  _ his _ resting place and destiny. He doesn't want Keith in it –he doesn't want Keith to die. It sounds obvious, but the feelings attached to it aren't.

“Still here?” a voice slowly becoming familiar cuts through the stillness of the air. Lance only hums. “Are they gonna be okay? Shiro–” Matt stops himself sharply.

Lance turns to look at him. Matt's goofiness is nowhere in sight and seeing him watching Shiro breathe like Lance did with Keith, it's easy to remember that they have a history. That he's been abducted by the Galra too, that he had to fight for his life, the he's as damaged as they all are.

A part of Lance, the part that made him avoid Matt, can't help being mad at him still. For letting his name be engraved on a tombstone for his sister to find.

“He doesn't have more than bruises,” Lance answers, because he can't not, “except for his arm.” He turns back to the infirmary, to the absence under the blanket that covers Shiro. His prosthetic had been nothing more than a mess of wires, hydraulics and gearwheels; the Galra had even used some rare electric tech in there, sparkling with the water in a way that made Lance wince in sympathy. He remembers the arc of lightning that caught him from a Druid's gauntlet, when–

“Pidge and Hunk took a look at it earlier,” he adds to bring himself back from the memory.

Matt sighs, then observes Lance for a few seconds. “So you were a pirate, huh?”

Lance glances at him, humming noncommittally. He stops himself once he’s aware of having reflexively brought his hand to rub at his wrist through his sleeve. He hides the mark but he can’t forget it.

“Crazy that we never ran into each other,” Matt huffs, straightening with an inhale that means he's shaking off the glum.

“Our crew never made direct contact with the rebels,” he says, thinking about the possibility of meeting Matt earlier, of changing the course of things, “our captain got coded messages about where to go next to mess with the Galra. We mainly did supply routes,” and that's exactly why he chose that ship. Supplies meant money. He doesn't really want to talk about it, because it's been too long since his last shipment to his family.

“Don't you miss it?”

Lance looks at Keith, looking strangely vulnerable without his gloves and the layers of his leather armor, the weight of his sword and his Bayard that seemed to tether him to the earth. Keith, strangely delicate with fragile bones exposed, more human and more breakable -so unlike the surface strength he puts on display all the time.

“I don't,” he says, and that's almost the truth. He looks at the new paldron Keith brought back from his time away; the symbol that isn’t Voltron’s carved in it. Halfway gone, even when he’s back.

He thinks that it would've hurt less to stay where there's nothing else than the horizon.

There's a space between waking and being awake; Keith exists in it for a long moment, though how long he couldn't say. His eyes are open, watching the mask on the table next to his bed; the familiarity of the colors on it leaves him unbalanced. He thinks of his mom.

She has a symbol on her chest-plate, the same he's known all his life from the dagger she gave him before leaving. Now he has the same marking on one of his shoulder pauldrons –he's not sure how to feel about that yet.

He's so tired of being torn apart. He always had to hide his Galra heritage, at first because being a half-breed wasn't seen kindly by either race. And then, well, they did turn out to be villains the whole world had to fear.

Now he's both Voltron's and the Blade's property, and he's never learned to be two things at once.

“It seems the Blade of Marmora possesses everything you wished for Volron to have,” a soft voice snaps Keith's mind back inside of himself; Allura is following his gaze to the Marmora mask.

It has sweet tech, he won't lie. He can see everything with it be it night or day, and use it for submarine infiltration even though he has no idea how it works exactly.

Allura is sitting next to his bed with her back straight, like this isn't the middle of the night and they aren't alone in the infirmary. The dark circles under her eyes are the only indication that her composure is nothing more than a hard learned habit.

Keith is not surprised by her presence; they've grown so much since she resented him for being half-Galra. There's been Lotor, since then. Keith hates to think that he carved an easy path for her to trust Lotor; then he remembers to give her more credit than that.

“If you could have seen this ship, before,” she smiles sadly, “if you could have seen Altea, when we were–” She breathes out and looks at her hands neatly folded on her lap. Keith never went farther than the border where the Garrison proudly sat, and all that's left of Altea now are lifeless pictures. Even the short black and white movies are lost.“I'm sorry.”

Keith jerks back as much as his pillow allows him. “For what?” His voice cracks from the dryness of his throat; he takes the glass Allura offers him silently.

“This was never intended to be used as an infirmary. We had a bay full of healing sarcophagi that could have already healed you. Prevented your skin from scarring.”

It strikes him with sudden clarity that he's been injured. He's been so blessedly pain free that he failed to notice the tightness of his skin under his bandages. With that realization, he turns his head on a sharp breath, only relaxing again when he spots Shiro in the next bed. And his arm–

Keith swallows heavily. “He is going to be alright,” Allura comforts him, but her voice wavers, “although it is taking too long for him to wake up. We are still trying to understand what lead to both your current states. Krolia never found anything substantial about the fight that clearly took place.” Her eyes narrow, like she already suspects something.

He's not sure how to go about explaining this.

“You're under no obligation to say anything right now. The threat has passed, you are both safe and healing, and you need rest more than we need answers at this moment,” she hesitates, “and I should leave you to sleep.” There's worry behind her eyes.

“Wait,” he frantically stops her before she can move. “I can't...,” he starts, throat clicking from the words he doesn't want to say. Even here, now, he can't admit to any weaknesses. “Don't you need rest, too?” he settles on asking instead, because the answer is an obvious one.

Alteans need less sleep, it has been common knowledge for centuries -they playfully never let the other races forget about it. But even for her this is late -three in the morning, according to Keith's arm-brace watch on the table beside him. Maybe she doesn't want to let go either. Maybe she can't help clinging to consciousness because it's less scary than the alternative.

“I–” she starts, then seems to come to a decision. “There is a lot on my mind.”

“Tell me, then.”

She blinks at him for a long second, then grins. “If I tell you mine, will you tell me yours?” This twinkle in her eyes, Keith hates the universe and the Galra so much for taking it away from her. It's only recently that she allowed herself to let that side of her come out again. Keith only nods, but sends her a small smile of his own back.

“I think about steam.” When she stops, Keith raises his eyebrows at her. She sighs. “You were there, am I wrong? When the Galra turned on us?”

Keith thinks back on the blessed days before the empire. When Daibazaal was a respected kingdom though there were rumors of the Galra running their own land ragged with intense exploitation.

They had an alliance with Altea. The Galra had a technology that could make steam and coal obsolete, but even their electricity wouldn't be enough to power it properly. Alteans had their alchemy, tied to crystals they were the only ones able to harvest. Energy crystals.

Both kingdoms could have changed the face of the world together. Well, they did, but not in the way everyone was expecting.

Daibazaal and Altea, struck from the maps. The other kingdoms invaded, humans and others alike. The hopeful purpose of the Garrison corrupted by Haggar and her experimentations.

Shiro and the Holts hadn't been the only casualties of this war, and they were certainly forgotten as easily as the rest. Except by Pidge and Keith.

He's not exactly sure what Hunk and Lance's stories are: they talk a lot about sailing but not so much about what came before that.

He nods at Allura's question.

“We could've changed the world,” she echoes Keith's thoughts. “And  _ we _ , as Voltron, are very close to turn the tide back to how things should be, though it will never be the same.  _ We _ , now have allies we know we can rely upon. I know Voltron hasn't been all you wanted it to be, Keith. I apologize for that.”

He wants to lie and say that it's not true, but it is. It's why he left- why he abandoned all of them to a hope he came to believe was pathetic. He feels so guilty about that. He used to talk big about responsibility towards Voltron, and now half of him will always be turned away -all he has left is the ghost of gentle fingers running over his tattoo and the way it was so easy to turn his back on Lance. There is no fixing that, he thinks.

Red pushes softly at his mind, a forgiveness Keith doesn't deserve. Distance has always weakened the connection with the Lions, and having to fight on foot far from the cave has accustomed the Paladins to their absence. But the severance had been voluntary that time.

“But now,” Allura continues, unaware of Keith's internal struggle, “now you will finally see what potential we were meant to achieve!” Keith is reeling with the change in tone, the excitement in her voice.

“What? How?” he stammers out, and she leans in to take his good hand in hers.

“Well I was initially going to wait for Shiro and yourself to get back to use it but, seeing the circumstances...,” Allura starts with more calm than a second ago, before the mask cracks again and she smiles widely, “Pidge! Pidge has a crystal! We can power the ship!”

There's a planet hovering in the sky –dark and heavy and dreadful. Lance looks up at it and feels its weight slowly burrowing under his ribs. Someone is crying nearby.

He turns and turns around, air swirling around him but never making it to his lungs. There, it's a prick of green light in the night, growing closer the more he looks at it.

It's raining. The drops on his skin are dry and offer none of the joy from before -before what, he wonders but he has no answer.

The light is a small shaking ball, shaping itself and cracking along invisible lines until it's Pidge. Kneeling in front of a grave.

“How could you do this to me?” she screams, hitting the earth under her; Lance can feel the punch to his own stomach. His feet aren't splayed on the ground, they're stuck in it and he's laying under and watching his sister though layers of mud. Her voice is hoarse from shouting at him, “How dare you leave us behind again?”

If his hands weren't crushed by the wet soil keeping him hidden, he would reach for her. When was the last time he felt like any of them were still within bearable distance?

Opening his mouth to apologize only collapses the dirt between his lips but it has no more taste than undisturbed air; still, he chokes. Over him, the planet hovers and a flash of light is coming towards Allura and he's rooted to the spot.

_ This is just a dream _ he thinks to unlock his legs and start running just like it happened in his waking hours –but this is not a memory, he doesn't remember it yet. This is now. He jumps in front of the light. It surrounds him, a burn that he knows he feels but that he doesn't, only a remembrance of pain.

He screams. He doesn't want to go back there. He doesn't want to see what's on the other side, not again. He thought he was ready to die but he’s not, he had many more years before then. He screams. The planet looms and he–

Snaps his eyes open, sucking air into his lungs like a drowning man swallows water.

“Dude...,” Hunk whispers, hand still on Lance's shoulder. He registers distantly that Hunk had been shaking him awake. “You stopped breathing there for a minute. Are you okay?”

The answer should be an obvious one: the tremors that run through his limbs aren't helped by his panting for breath, and he can feel the weakness in his arm when he raises it to pull on the collar of his sweat-soaked tunic.

He's not okay. But they're all having their own nightmares nowadays; once upon a time, Lance muses, Hunk and him had the heaviest sleep. Look at them now, he thinks, awake in the middle of the night.

But once upon a time, the attacks they took part in weren't weighted by destiny, and were nothing more than skirmishes. They were thieves, some harm done but the kills were occasional and never at his own hands.

Keith would hate him for thinking like that, he knows, because turning a blind eye on crew members taking lives shouldn't feel like the privilege of a clear conscience.

The only good thing about fighting on land as Paladins has been the Galrans automatons -though they offer their own kinds of nightmares. Those things shouldn't be as fast and clever as they are; but they also meant less actual opponents. For a while anyway.

“I'm fine,” Lance settles for after catching his breath, trying to shake off the downward spiral of thoughts. It's the only good answer, because if one of them drops the act, they all fall like dominoes, and Lance won't be the one to fail when they're so close to finally have access to the true potential of Voltron. He props himself up on one elbow so he stops feeling like he's still lying in his nightmare. Blue's consciousness feels like she's shaking herself dry.

Hunk hums, letting it go but wanting to show he doesn't believe the answer for even one second.

“Promise,” Lance feels the need to add, reaching a hand and lightly grasping Hunk's shoulder. Touching him should make this moment more tangible than the dream, but he’s just a little more desperate for it to be true.

A good night sleep, he thinks, he’ll be completely alright if he can have that. No more dark thoughts.

Hunk gives him an odd look, wrapping his own fingers around Lance's wrist, the one with their shared pirate mark.

The dam holding their hearts back lets some emotions spill through the contact. Lance doesn’t know when they built those –there never used to be anything standing between them. 

“You're leaking,” Hunk whispers like a secret. Lance's head jerks back and he let's go of Hunk to touch his own face, the warmth of his best friend's hand disappearing reluctantly. That's when Lance realizes he's crying.

“I don't– I don't know,” he says back, voice raw. He doesn't understand the tears that keep rolling down his cheeks. Hunk hums and pushes Lance so he falls back and scoots a little, then lies down besides him.

“We'll be okay,” Hunk's voice shakes, but the force behind his words proves that he's ready to make it happen if the world keep trying to get in their way. Lance trusts him. Has trusted him since the moment they walked the same planks on a lonely ship.

He stares at the ceiling for a while, wishing it would be the clear sky over his village, the soft lapping of the water underneath his floorboard lulling him to sleep in the way the creaks of this ship can't.

He closes his eyes and remembers his mother -but not her voice, he can't remember her voice- telling him the stories of the guardian god of sleep. So he prays for this unbearable wakefulness to end, for the nightmares to stay away, for peace to touch his friends too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on [Tumblr](http://kinsbournescream.tumblr.com/tagged/ana-writes-sometimes) if you'd fancy a talk


	4. It's okay if you can't find the words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm in the middle of whumptober but I haven't updated in ages and the chapter is ready to be posted so!  
> Promise chapter 5 will be out sooner!  
> To all who commented: I love you so much guys <3  
> To all who left kudos: I love you too random citizens <3

_Keith can't really grasp Lance._

_There's these moments, when everything else is quiet and all you can hear is how lonely life can be, that Keith wishes for noise. Most of the time, there's Pidge or Hunk or Lance to deliver, or the three of them together. Most of the time, it makes Keith feel even more alone, because while he understands how being with people works, he can never quite do it right._

_Most of the time, still, it's enough._

_Tonight is his last night before leaving, and_ he _'s the one that made a lot of noise about it. A part of him regrets, but the rest of him itches for departure; he's not sure if it's in his blood or in the way he's too used to running away._

_A tiny part of him thinks that he might lose something as soon as his back is turned, but he ignores it. Tries to. Despite himself, that feeling makes him go up on the hill to the highest point along the cliff side. He knows he'll find Lance there, that he needs to see him though he's not sure if it'll make things better or worse._

_Keith wishes for noise, but all he gets is the distant sound of the waves eating the earth underneath; the wind; the crunch of his steps on the wet grass. All he gets is the low mumble of a voice drifting away from him to reach ocean gods he neither knows nor believes in. Lance’s back stiffens and he turns to him._

“ _Praying again?” He hates it, that thing he'll never understand that seems to be pulling Lance farther and farther away from them all._

_Lance hasn't changed one bit since the first time they met, the warm skin and lively eyes; the same loudness and confidence painted on every visible part of him. But Keith can't recognize him sometimes. He's not sure if he's seeing what was there the whole time but hidden away -like spotting one snake only to discover the whole nest; or if Lance's whole being has been turned upside down._

_For a single second, a sharp nostalgia hits him, as if he’d left years ago and is now coming back, finding out that Lance isn't Lance anymore. Just the shape of him imprinted on an empty wall after all the furniture has been taken away. Like the absence of his parent’s picture next to the window._

_Keith shakes himself out of those sentimental thoughts. “I always wondered what you're saying,” he adds, taking a step he shouldn't be taking, since he's leaving and it's too late. Too damn late._

_Lance glances aside before turning an unsure gaze on Keith._ “ _I'm asking– I'm asking forgiveness. So, hum...so when the sea takes me...” It seems so difficult to say. Is he afraid Keith won't understand, or that he will?_

_Because what Keith gets from the unfinished explanation, he doesn't like one bit. “What do you mean?” he crosses his arms against his chest, defiant. Daring this person in front of him to keep pretending to be Lance, to use his voice but say things that are so unlike him. “The sea isn't taking you anywhere.”_

_But it is. From the moment Voltron started it was obvious. Pidge fights for her family, Shiro has a sense of purpose and nowhere else to be, Hunk said he can’t go home any other way than by winning this fight, no matter how hard it’s been on him. Keith needs to be moving all the time. But Lance._

_Keith is leaving now, but Lance hasn't really been here from the start. And that's why this thing that's been building between them, it can't be._

_Keith needs to know things won't budge but can never trust unmovable things._

_And Lance–_ “ _People like me,” he says with a self-conscious sadness, “we don't belong on steady ground.”_

_And Keith could try to clutch him to his chest and never let go, but he would only choke the life out of Lance – this boy would wither away at being cut off from his ocean and his home. It's better to let him slip between his arms like smooth water; this way, Keith can choose to lose him._

  
  


Keith slips his hand inside his only usable glove. The second has been thrown away, he learned, and if he feels a little stupid with only one he still feels safer than without any at all. The other hand is still bandaged.

“How can you be so sure he's a clone?” Pidge asks, watching Shiro's unmoving form like dissecting an automaton's inside. It makes Keith feel a little sick. He can't muster the energy to lit up his inner fire, the anger that fueled him for all these years; if he could, he would snap at Pidge to stop doing that.

He also forces himself to remember that unlike them all, the information isn’t new to him. He’s had– he’s had _time_ to process it in the Abyss, to forget the mistrust and the rage. To go from wanting to destroy the clone to understanding that this Shiro is not at fault. It makes it easier to forgive Pidge.

It doesn’t help with his own guilt, though, as he looks at the absent arm under the covers and lets the anxiety fill him. Shiro should've woken up by now.

Keith is very tired suddenly. He only wants for his life to stop being so hectic all the time, to stop taking people away as it gives others back. Loved ones aren't a currency to be exchanged like an equivalence, like Keith can only be allowed a certain amount of affection. 

Lose your father, get Shiro; lose Shiro, get your mother. It's an endless unfair trade and anyone superstitious would believe this to be a curse. He holds on to the thought that he has the team with him now.

But. Does he, still?

For a single second, he loses himself in the fantasy of going back to his blessed years; to the Garrison.

“I saw the orders,” he rips himself out of the dream after his too long silence, “and–” the picture showing rows of clones. The failed ones and the waiting ones. Unaware of being objects instead of human beings, in the eyes of their makers.

Keith’s heart clenches painfully as he glances at Shiro’s perfect copy; he’s not a thing, he’s his brother. “There’s some details missing,” he finishes instead. The things only someone who’s known Shiro for a lifetime would notice if they’re really looking for it –a faded scar from a sparring session, a beauty mark erased by a bad fall on a rocky terrain. Keith has the sudden, terrifying realization of how the Galra had to replicate the mark across Shiro’s nose. 

“The arm sounded different too,” he chokes out to forget about it, but it circles back to the fact that he’s the one who destroyed it. 

“Yeah, we tried to look for the parts,” Hunk sheepishly says, rubbing the back of his head, like it's his fault the thing is scattered all over the sea floor, “but there's nothing left.” He sighs while Lance nods, but Keith thinks that it doesn’t matter anyway. 

“How did you two even fall down the cliff anyway?” Lance asks at the same time Pidge says, “How did you know to go for the arm?”

A short silence follows both questions as they look at each other. Keith curses the need for everyone to get to the bottom of things that would be better laid to rest in the past. Can't they just move on from here?

“Only one place for the mind control to come from, I guess,” he shrugs, barely remembering what instinct and fast thoughts made him bet on this during the fight.

Hunk immediately starts talking mechanic and transmitters and nerve connectors with Pidge, with Allura interjecting every once in a while to add what she knows of Galran technology to the mix. Krolia uses a short silence to state, “Brainwashing,” but by that point Keith is barely listening, trying to ignore the weight of Lance’s gaze on him.

“Where did you hide all those smarts?” Lance chuckles bitterly under the sound of everyone else’s conversation. Keith can’t figure out why he’s so mad. “Certainly not in the moment you decided to go face this thing alone without letting any of us know about it.”

“He’s not a thing!” Keith bites back.

Quiet burns all the oxygen in the room, every breath held. If only Keith could swallow back his words so they didn’t have to fight about this right now. Maybe ever. He’ll never be the one to try and change minds once he’s said his piece, shown his discontent, ran to where he can do exactly what he wants.

For them all, Shiro is a fake puppet and they’ll never understand that if they keep thinking this way, Keith is ready to leave this place with his brother without looking back.

He's already had to give up the fight against tying Shiro's arm to the bed, too; he won't give away any more ground on this.

“Maybe you should be a bit more gentle with number four, ay? He is still healing,” Coran puts a hand on Lance’s shoulder that makes him deflate and sigh, then turns his eyes on Keith. “How is your hand faring, while we are on the subject?”

Keith thinks that the hand is not the worst part of all of this –he looks down at it, opens and closes his fist. “I don’t feel a thing,” and it’s not a lie. Coran’s ointment and exercises will permit Keith to keep his full range of motion though there’s no way to predict how the nerve damage will affect his fighting. He uses his left hand less than the right anyway.

No, the worst part is the deep ache, the pain that doesn’t let him really rest without help, the weakness of his limbs, and Shiro unmoving next to him. 

Lance hums, arms crossed. “Next time maybe don’t try and grab Shiro’s arm with your bare hand,” he says. Keith would answer that his hand wasn’t bare but well, even leather burns and it had already been cut open by his own blade. 

“I couldn’t just let him fall,” Keith snaps out instead, and regrets it instantly because it opens the way for more arguments when they realize what happened exactly. He should’ve lied and said it’d been the only way to defend himself; but he’s always been terrible at pretending.

He glances at his mother quietly considering the scene from a corner, drawing strength from her impartial impassibility. She _knew_ even before she went to investigate the cliff to make sure it hadn’t been something else that attacked them.

“Keith,” Allura says softly to tame his fire. It’s always a wild bet to know, between Keith and Lance, who can be reached first to be brought back to reason.

“Wait,” Lance interrupts whatever Allura was preparing to say, putting his hands out for a halt. “Is that why you fell too?” 

“I–” Keith starts to defend himself without looking at the incredulous expression of Lance’s face. This is what he didn’t want. He doesn’t know what to say because he’s aware it’d been stupidly dangerous but he’s not sorry so he won’t admit to the wrongs and won’t try to explain how right it’d been.

“How idiotic can you be?” Lance shouts when he doesn’t elaborate. “Did you actually jump after him as if that’d help– did you really think you’d make it out alive? You’re lucky you didn’t break on the surface from this height! And that your dog knew to get you! You could’ve died!”

“It’s not a dog,” Keith retorts before he can consider the absurdity of the words, “and I couldn’t let Shiro die, okay?”

“It’s not Shiro!” Lance spits out, “And it doesn’t even have a name,” he adds just to have the last word though it takes a second for Keith to understand he’s talking about the wolf. Lance turns on his heels when he’s finished, ready to stomp out like a diva.

“Guys,” Hunk tries to say but it’s covered by Keith’s next words, his tone so cold he can’t even recognize himself in it, “You’re way too self-centered to understand anyway.” It’s a lie, he _knows_ but he couldn’t swallow it back even if anger wasn’t clogging his throat. 

Lance’s back tenses up before he leaves the room quietly, and everyone else turns to stare at Keith with disapproving eyes. Heavy silence settles in the spaces between them; the Abyss once more, between him and everybody else.

“He didn’t mean it,” Hunk shatters the tension, “about the clone not being...you know.” He still glances uneasily at Shiro. “We all know it, but it’s hard to digest so you can’t be mad that we’re cautious about it. Lance is just worried...but I hope you didn’t mean it, too, because I’ll make him apologize to you and I expect a sincere one in return.” Then he goes after his best friend.

“You’re just a bunch of idiots anyways,” Pidge causticly declares, her steely gaze on Keith, “constantly putting your lives in danger for the benefit of people who didn’t ask for it, like you matter less or something. You _are_ lucky you didn’t die, ‘cause I’m not sure Allura could’ve pulled her voodoo trick again.” The anger that flashes in her eyes makes Keith remember her rage after Matt’s grave, and he shifts nervously. “I’m gonna go check on Matt.”

She leaves too, and Keith looks down. He understands what losing family means to Pidge, and despite what she just said he knows she understands what saving it can cost, too.

“What did she mean,” he asks quietly without looking up, “voodoo trick?”

“What happened with Lance is of little relevance now,” Allura dismisses the question and ignores the way her answer makes Keith’s head snap up in confusion, “I will try to gather everyone back on the control deck to discuss the crystal as we were supposed to.” She huffs and flips her hair in frustration as she stands, Coran following her out with an apologetic glance at Keith. 

Alone with his mother, they look at each other, tied together by the deep knowledge of all the consequences of leaving. “Your team will come around,” she reassures him, but it feels more like her own hope that their relation isn’t irreparably broken by her decision to go back to the Blade, when Keith was only a child who couldn’t understand why he was abandoned. 

He has been less important than the mission since before he even knew the word existed. So he continues on that path, clenches his fists as much as he can. He ignores the tremors in his legs to get up. “Better help them get there, then,” he says, toneless, and follows his team.

  
  


Lance’s feet take him to the control deck without realizing it and curses old habits born from the familiar flow of adrenaline through his veins. He pulls his pendant from under his tunic and rubs it to calm himself down; in the grainy surface of sea glass against his skin he finds the day he left his family behind.

No moon, he remembers, easier to go without being watched –it’s bad luck for those who stay behind. His sister, luck be damned, sneaked out and tossed him the piece of glass tied on a string, too thin arms still throwing father than he ever could. _Don’t forget_ , she shouted in the still night, and he never did.

Never forgot home or the way it burned, the smoke over the dunes as they fled, the absence of the dead and the gods, the soreness of his arms after keeping his unconscious brother afloat all the way to shore, the dirty street and lack of food.

Still, the pendant brings him calm, simply because it’s home.

“Do you really believe what you said about Shiro?” Hunk’s nervous voice drifts through the memories, “That he’s not– that he’s just a thing?”

Lance sighs, so tired of it all. So many hours, wishing for Volton to be real; but they’re already veterans and yet this war doesn’t seem to have an end. It feels like a burden, that Pidge finally figured out what the crystal is. Lance wants to go back to a simpler time– a godly time.

A time when limitswhere the definite surface of the sea and not the ever shifting away horizon. 

Blue’s weak presence nudges at him, but it’s not enough. 

A part of Lance wants to keep the distance and ask Hunk, _don’t you?_ “No, I don’t,” he answers instead, emotionless. “I just–”

He just? When is he _just_ worried about Keith? About any of them? He’s _just_ mad because Keith _just_ almost died without any of them knowing, and who does Keith think he is, giving his life to the sea like he’s the offering it has demanded for all of Lance’s life.

Some petty, wounded part of him that he hates won’t ever admit he _just_ wished Shiro could’ve stayed at the bottom of the ocean. He understands that the clone’s harshness towards him was Haggar’s –but does it make sense? It could have only be Shiro’s, and it might never stop. He might keep taking Lo–

Lance freezes. “He was always agreeing with Lotor, wasn’t he?” Lance frowns. “Maybe–”

“Good of you to think that we don’t exercise enough–” Pidge interrupts him dryly, walking in with Matt in tow “–and make us all walk here to talk about the crystal. You know, like we were supposed to back there?” Her eyes drift down to Lance’s hand still nervously rubbing the pendant. She points at it with her chin, “Is this another of your things?”

Lance stops and fumbles to put it back under his tunic without looking back at her, not in the mood to be mocked right now. Especially about this. When he glances up to watch her reaction, something flashes behind her eyes; worry or regret or contempt maybe, too fast for Lance to catch what it is.

“Glad that we can finally have this meeting,” Allura’s unamused voice makes them turn as one. Coran emerges from behind a panel as if he’d already been in the room –it’s entirely possible he was– and Keith comes in a minute later, pointedly avoiding looking at Lance who swallows heavily and turns his head away. 

He doesn’t note the stiffness of Keith’s gate, the tightness of his face. 

“It is regrettable that Shiro is absent from this discussion, as the leader, but we will have to proceed without him,” she announces, Keith straightening up in the corner of Lance’s eyes at the mention of Shiro’s position. “We cannot be sure when he will wake up or in what state of mind,” Keith’s shoulders tensing up, “but Lotor will be back soon, and our fight against the Galra will not wait for us to gather our wits.”

How are they supposed to fight a war when they might still have to fight what’s hidden in Shiro’s mind, Lance wants to ask. How can they save a world, when they couldn’t even save one of their own? He looks down in shame. Lance sees where this is going, but Allura continues before he can ask how they’re supposed to use Voltron when they’re down one Paladin, one friend. 

“Pidge has found a crystal on her journey,” more guilt, as he glances at Pidge and Hunk who shift uncomfortably for a second. “A crystal from the now destroyed or conquered Balmera mountains, in Altea,” Allura’s voice cracks almost imperceptibly, “and what gave us, Alteans, some of our abilities. 

“What has helped us develop a new kind of technology that is no longer lost to a dead future,” her smile is wistful, but hopeful. “This is my people’s legacy, this ship, but the Lions too.” Her voice gains strength as she turns to look out the windows. “And we can give them power at last.” 

This deck is just over the water line when the ship is resting, and all they can see are the cave walls. Allura’s eyes seem to already be gazing at endless stretches of uninterrupted ocean.

She turns back to them all. “Hiding is over,” she declares with a strength Lance wishes he was still feeling, “Let’s form Voltron!”

**Author's Note:**

>  **Comments and kudos are like Patreon tiers: one kudo makes me happy for a minute and a half, one comment makes my day and gives you an update** ヾ(⌐■_■)ノ♪  
> I'm on [Tumblr](http://kinsbournescream.tumblr.com/tagged/ana-writes-sometimes)


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